160 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN 



SEPTEMBER 



Weeds we alternately love and hate Amaryllis belladonna First 

 touch of frost Colour-blindness Special annuals Autumn 

 seed-sowing Ee-planting Carnation layers Planting drives and 

 approaches to small houses Wild gardening ' Double Violets 

 Salvias Baby chickens Pigeons. 



September 11th. In talking of the Welsh Poppy in July 

 I spoke of it as one of the plants which are such weeds 

 that at times one says, ' Oh, I wish I had never 

 introduced the horrible thing into the garden at all ! ' 

 Another of these is the Campanula ranunculus, or Creep- 

 ing Bell-flower ' creeping,' not because of its growth, but 

 because of its root. After rain in July, August, or Sept- 

 ember, or even much later, I know nothing more lovely 

 than the way it throws up its flower-stems, quite in 

 unexpected places. These when picked and fixed in 

 vases in the Japanese way are most graceful, and last a 

 long time in water. Another terrible weed is the wild 

 annual Balsam, Impatiens glandulifera, which sows itself 

 in the most audacious and triumphant manner ; but it 

 takes little root-hold, and is easy to pull up in the spring. 

 What a wonderfully handsome, yet delicate, plant it is ! 

 with its beautiful flowers, its long pointed leaves, its red 

 square stems, its seed-vessels shaped like buds, which 

 burst with a crack and scatter the seeds far and wide. 

 Were the plant difficult to grow, no garden or greenhouse 

 would be without it. It deserves a place, even if reduced 

 to one plant, in every moderate-sized garden ; it looks 



